Left Hand Motif of the Month December 2015 Snowflake 3 Motif Crochet Tutorial

Hey everyone, it's Deja from crocheteverafter.com. Today is our newest motif of the month and it's our third annual snowflake. So it's December 2015. And every December I make a snowflake motif for you guys. And this is our newest one. So it's made, I've made it in worsted. You can make it in any size you want. So I'm only doing worsted so you can see the stitches better. But get some crochet thread if you want some nice small ones or some really big ones. But I'm using a G 4mm hook, the pattern is in the link, and let's get started. To begin our snowflake, we're going to put a slipknot on our hook's yarn and just twist it down, and I'll reach through the center and grab the yarn that's attached to my ball, and I'll pull it on your tail to tighten that down. This is going to have a little open center in the center of our snowflake, so we're going to start with a chain 6 and then we're going to join that. I'm doing that to the yarn over from back to front. And then we're going to join with a slip stitch hook in that first chain, push through, yarn over, and using a pretty small hook, we're using a G, a 4mm, because we want this snowflake to be as tight as possible so that it will be, you know, pretty stiff without blocking. So you can block it, but you don't necessarily have to, so that's why we're using such a small hook. with the medium worsted weight yarn so now for round one we're going to chain one and that's just to get some height and then we're going to single crochet 12 times into this ring so i'm going to enter my hook straight through yarn over pull up a loop pull through both and do that 11 more times come back and join up and start round two single crochet Sometimes these will lay on top of your simple crochets at the beginning of the round because there are so many. So remember, because this is crocheted around a ring, you can just kind of... Another thing I like, never seen in any of my videos, but losing count. I love your single crochets and you're brand new. It's really difficult. It's even difficult for me to count the front of these stitches. I could not tell you how many I had trying to just count these squished up loops. So always turn your work sideways and look at the top of your stitches. So each of your stitches looks like the letter V. So just count all of those V's. So we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. And that's also going to help you when you join, because you want to join in this first single crochet. So if you count backwards when you get to 12, that's where you're inserting your hook to do your slip stitch to join the round. So just insert your hook right through the top two loops. And this first one sometimes can be kind of tight because of that very first single crochet. So just kind of get under there, yarn over, and pull through both those loops, and then pull through on your hook. So now we have round one down, and we're ready for round two. Okay, round two is going to be an easy round as well, so we're going to chain three first, count as our very first full crochet, and then we're going to double crochet in the next stitch. So this one that we joined, that's going to count as our first stitch. That chain three is going to count as a stitch right here in this stitch. So double crocheting in our next stitch, we look for that V right to the left, or to the right if you're left-handed. And go under those top two loops and do your double crochet. Turn over, pull two, then we're going to start our repeat. So this is what we're going to do for the rest of the round. We're going to chain five. Make them nice and even chains. Keep them the size of your shaft. Don't make them too loose because this is going to be part of the design. You don't want these real loopy and inconsistent. So when you make them, make them the size of your shaft so that they all look the same. Then we're going to double crochet two times or once in the next two stitches. So again, here's where we made our last double crochet, you can see the little hole and the pull-up on it, you can see, so we look to the left, or to the right if you're left-handed, and go into the next double crochet, we're not skipping any, or the next single crochet, we're not skipping any stitches, we are just going right into the next, creating a bigger motif by creating those chain 5s. So again, let me show you the chain 5s. Yarn over, point your hook down so that way you don't have to pull. out your chain so if you find like you have to make a really big chain to get your hook through because if i pull it out real big i can turn my hook any way i want to and get through it but to make your chain the same size as your shaft just point your hook straight down with the stitch and you'll get through it nice and easy that's not going to work if i hold my hook sideways stuck so point it straight down pull through push it to the size of your shaft and do that five times Then when I make this first double crochet, it's going to loop on itself, so when I first pull it up, notice that the chain kind of wraps around my hook, so it makes it a little difficult to work, so you can kind of just push it out of the way, or get through those first two, and then push it back and hold it down, so that way you can get through it nice and easy, because it wants to turn on it. So we're going to do that now, four more times technically, three more times technically. So three more times with the chain 5 and double crochet, and then we'll meet up at the end to do the last chain 5 and to join it up. I'm just doing the last chain 5 in the instructions, of our circle, and then we're going to join the round with a slip stitch in the top of our chain 3 and 1. So now we have a nice little kind double this up as something else, but we're going to start our round 3 with a chain 1. This one is... Pretty simple. We're going to single crochet in the same stitch as the join. So where we join, where we made this chain one, we're going back in. So you'll kind of see a big hole right there. You're going to insert your hook right in that hole and do a single crochet. I'm not going to count our chain one as a single crochet because it never really looks like one. Chain threes can kind of get poofy and look like a double crochet, but a chain one just... Always gets squished and doesn't really look like a stitch, so I always like to put a single crochet there. Then we're gonna picot. So this picot is a chain four picot. If you look at your special stitches, it tells you what to do, but it's pretty basic. We're gonna do chain four and we're gonna make them nice and consistent like we did with our chain five. And then we're gonna slip stitch in that very first chain that we just made. If you're not used to seeing these, you know where they're at, just go ahead and slip stitch in there. It's going to give us our little snowflake. Then we're going to single crochet in our next stitch. So these double crochets are going to be single crocheted into. So if you look, it's kind of difficult sometimes to see where that double crochet comes out of. You'll see that big stitch we just worked into. And then this little V right next to it is where our single crochet is going into our double crochet. Small. Make sure you're looking for those Vs. Single crochet there. We have a pattern repeat. So in our chain 5 space, we're going to do a bunch of stitches. We're going to start with a single crochet, build up to get higher, now we're going to do a half double crochet, double crochet, and create like another point, but without any kind of slip stitching. We're just going to chain 4, nice and tight and consistent. Work our way back down, so now we're going to do another double crochet, double crochet, and And then we start our process all over again. So that's one of our loops. We do the single crochet. So now we're doing a single crochet and a double crochet. Sometimes these are gonna cover over this double crochet. So make sure you pull all these over out of the way and look for that V that's right on top of your stitch. Single crochet in there, there you go, so chain four. You'll notice I kind of like stop and grab because it's hard to get straight through a slip stitch with both loops in one swipe. So I always kind of do one at a time and move my stitches as I need to to get through them. I'm going to do our little loop again, our single, single, those up and then back down and then we'll start over. So go ahead and finish the rest of this round and we'll join and look at the finished item. Single crochet now in a join. So we have our picot, our double crochet from below. So you just join right in the top of that first single crochet, which is right above the double crochet. You can see the V right here. Insert our hook under the V. Chain and pull it long to fasten off. Two ends to weave in, which is nice. You have your center and this top one. I'm going to weave this in and then we'll check out the fit. Okay, I finished weaving in the end, so I didn't really pull it out or anything, so this is kind of what it looks like when I finish, so as you go, or once you finish, you can kind of pull on it, get it all nice and straightened out and flat, so this doesn't necessarily need any blocking, if you like the look of it, how it is, you can block it if you want kind of more pointy points, give it more of a snowflake, and I have the other snowflake video, the original, First snowflake from December 2013. And it shows you how to block these, so if you need to see how to block those, you can check out that video. But this is great in any size, so if you get the crochet thread, you can make them as ornaments. This could be an ornament too, because it's not super huge, but you could hang that as an ornament. Or a little garland would be really cute. But the crochet thread, you could make it as present decorations, so get some craft I'm going to take some kraft paper and some white crochet thread and weave into the paper and use the crochet thread to make it look nice. I appreciate your presence, that would be really pretty. But lots of different uses for these. So if you have any questions, leave them below, and thank you for watching.